Holiday Decoration Storage 101: Labeling and Stowing

As the holiday season approaches and you dust off decorations you may be suffering some seasonal storage stress. When the holiday season wrapped up last year, the rush to do away with the winter décor likely left you with a disaster to unearth this time around.

This week, we’ll be giving away our top holiday decoration storage tips so that this is the last year you’ll face a mountainous mess of twinkle lights and snow globes.

Today we’ll be talking labeling and proper stowing. Though you may have scribbled “Christmas” onto an old Amazon box last year, odds are you’re still struggling to find every last stocking.

Take the time this year to ensure your decorations are easy to find and safely stored for the future.

Purchase Proper Storage Containers

If your holiday boxes have a faded image of a VCR on them, odds are you’re due for a storage container upgrade. Cardboard boxes can serve a purpose, but if you’re keeping Halloween decorations, Thanksgiving platters and cookie jars in brown, indistinguishable boxes you’re probably struggling to sort out what’s what right about now.

Decide this year to liberate yourself from the cardboard incarceration and invest in some plastic containers. These will not only do a better job protecting your delicate decorations, but they have a stackable quality you’ll be glad to have when it comes to putting everything away again.

Color Coordination and Label Location

What good does labeling do you if you end up eventually stacking something on top of it? Label your holiday decorations in a way that will make it easy to find a year from now.

Rob Rebholz of SpaceWays recommends using color as the first step in decoration labeling.

“All the boxes you use to store your holiday decorations should be of the same shape and size so you can stack and store them more easily. Also, color coordinate your labels by picking seasonal colors. For instance, use orange labels f​or your Halloween decoration, red labels for Christmas decorations or green for Easter decorations,” says Rebholz.

Make sure the label is not only visible at all times, but a color that you can easily recognize for the season. Instead of placing labels on top of your storage containers, place them on the side in a location that will face outward.

Stack Smart

As Rebholz mentioned, you’ll want boxes that are the same shape and size to ensure you can easily stack decorations and make the most of your storage space. Stacking alone, however, doesn’t guarantee easy removal next year.

If you stack your Christmas decorations on top of Halloween decorations, it may make putting things away this year easy, but you’ll be regretting this decision next October.

Create like stacks so that loading and unloading goes the same every year. Dedicate a column to each holiday that will assure you’re not doing the storage box shuffle next year.

Storing your decorations in a way that makes them easy to find and safe from harm sounds like a great idea, but it’s easy to forget just how irritating unloading decorations can be until the next year when you’re trudging through the mess all over again. Make the decision this year to get organized and you’ll be glad you did the following season.

Stay tuned all week for more tips on how to store holiday decorations. Your knick knacks and garland will thank you.